A Family For Christmas

He added the latter in case, as he suspected, she was from the area. Probably living somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Nevada.

A lot of the residents he’d seen in the nearest burg, Prospector—less than a town, but more than nothing—had been Native American. He was living on the border of their reservation.

His current patient was clearly Caucasian.

“I need to see how badly you’re hurt,” he said next. He wanted to remove her outerwear. To make certain that her limbs weren’t misshapen—indicating breaks—or swollen—indicating any number of other things. He needed to see if there were worse lacerations. He needed to call someone.

But first, he grabbed the bag he never traveled without. Pulled out a blood pressure cuff and, pushing up the sleeve of her sweater, wrapped it around her arm and pumped. If her vitals told him this was an emergency, he wouldn’t have time to wait for help.

Simon was concentrating so completely on the simple blood-pressure reading—his first medical action since he was attacked and something he hadn’t done himself in years—that he was startled to glance at her face and see her watching him.

She was cognizant. Her gaze was clear. Assessing.

She glanced at the cuff, as if asking, Who travels to a cabin on vacation with a blood-pressure cuff?

“My bag’s on the floor,” he told her. And then said again, “I’m a doctor. Dr. Simon Walsh,” in case she hadn’t been fully aware during his earlier introduction.

“A thoracic surgeon, you said.” Her voice was soft, a bit rough, her mouth barely moving. Almost as though her throat was sore—and her jaw broken. He looked at the sweater zipped up around her neck, wondering if he’d find marks on her throat, too.

Had someone tried to kill her?

Repeatedly? Based on the bruises.

Or was she into something he probably didn’t want to know about?

What if she was the bad guy?

He took off the cuff and pulled a stethoscope out of his bag.

“What’s your name?”

“Cara.”

Pretty sure that a Cara what? would garner him nothing, he nodded. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Eight years younger than he was.

“I’d like to listen to your heart, if that’s okay with you?”

She nodded slightly, timidly. Not like someone who was contemplating some nefarious deed or getaway.

Not that he’d really know. He spent his life with children. Sick children.

Children he’d been forced to leave behind because he could no longer help them...

Leaving her zipper up, he slid the stethoscope chestpiece under the T-shirt he found under her sweater. Her heartbeat was a little fast—nothing to be concerned about, considering the circumstances. Steady. Clear. Even when she took deep breaths as he instructed.

“Can I feel your abdomen? Check for internal injuries?”

She gave the barely discernable nod a second time. But added slowly, “He doesn’t ever hit me there.”

Simon’s fingers didn’t miss a beat. His heart did. His first guess had been accurate. She’d been beaten.

By a man.

Her husband?

An accomplice?

Someone trying to rob her?

A kidnapper?

“What about your extremities? Where do you hurt?”

She shook her head. Started to sit up. “I need to go,” she said. “My arms and legs are fine. Some bruises, maybe. I fell. But I can walk.”

With gentle hands used to coddling children, Simon urged her back down. Felt around both sides of her jaw bone. There were no obvious fractures.

“I can’t just let you walk away from here,” he told her. “The Hippocratic Oath and all.” He could recite the entire thing.

“It’s no longer binding,” she told him. Talking brought obvious discomfort, based on her small movements and the expression on her face, but didn’t seem to hinder her significantly.

Because she was used to the pain?

He studied her. “You were unconscious when I found you. You should have a CAT scan. And an MRI.”

She closed her eyes. Waited a couple of seconds and opened them again.

“I’m an able adult. If you called an ambulance, I would simply leave before it got here.” She started to sit up again. “I actually think I’ve outstayed my welcome as it is. I’ll just go ahead and...”

She winced as she rose up, and Simon lowered her back to the bed once again, pulling a second pillow behind her head.

“You’ve obviously suffered severe trauma to your head. You could have a brain bleed.” Her speech told him she was educated—and perhaps not suffering from serious brain damage.

“My vision’s not blurred. I’m not slurring my words.”

Her Hippocratic Oath comment came back to him. She was right, of course, about how it was no longer binding. Not everyone knew that. “You a doctor?” he asked. Could explain why she was living on or near an Indian reservation.

“No.”

“You work in the medical field?”

“No.”

The woman had no problem withholding information.

Her pupils weren’t enlarged. They were identical in size. And when he shone his light in her eyes, they both responded normally.

“How bad is your headache?” He wasn’t giving her a chance to tell him she didn’t have one.

“On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a six.”

Medical professionals commonly asked patients to rate their pain on the one to ten scale. But a scale of one to ten was used so much it was almost cliché, too.

“Who hit you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

He wanted to push. Didn’t want her to leave. Legally, he couldn’t make her stay. He could only call for emergency service and hope that she didn’t get far enough that they couldn’t find her. But she could refuse to go with them even if he did that.

And what if she did manage to escape? And then died out in the wilderness?

“You need to get checked out at a hospital.”

“You think the doctors there are better than you?”

They could see with both eyes. He didn’t speak aloud. For what he was doing there with her...one eye was plenty.

“They have the equipment to do the proper tests,” he told her. He had to advise her. It was his job. His life’s work.

“I’m not going to any hospital.”

She also didn’t try to sit up again.

“So...I’ll make a deal with you,” he told her, talking on the fly. “You agree to let me get you cleaned up, get a good look at you, do what I can here...you agree to let me take your vitals regularly and to watch you for any sign of more serious injury...and I won’t make any calls. For now.”

“Okay,” she said. Closing her eyes again and opening them. “For now.”

She was watching him but looked like the effort to do so was costing her.

He couldn’t help but wonder what she was really thinking. But he was pretty sure it had to do with leaving as soon as she could.

“You can trust me,” he told her. And then, reaching down into his bag, he pulled out his ID, showing it to her.

She read. “Los Angeles Children’s?”

He nodded and was left with the impression that she knew of the place. Los Angeles was a good ten-hour drive from Prospector, with only enough stops to pee and gas up. Did she know someone from there? Or someone who’d been treated there?

“Do you have any other questions?” He couldn’t guarantee he’d answer them, but if he could prove that he wouldn’t hurt her, he’d do his best.

“No.”

He had questions. And wondered if she’d declined his invitation to ask him anything so that he wouldn’t feel free to do the same.

“Who hit you?”

She turned her head.

“You said he doesn’t ever hit you in the abdomen.”

“Nor on the mouth.”

“Your bruises show signs of previous abuse.”

“He gets tense and...”

“Who is he?” Simon was pretty sure he knew. But he had to make sure. Had to know what he was letting himself in for.

What he might have to protect them both against.

He had a hunting rifle with him. A basic .22 in case of unwanted varmints.

“My husband.”

His heart dropped. Confirmation...and yet...wow. She was so young. With such soulful, intelligent eyes.

And a face swollen almost out of recognition.

“Is he coming after you?” He had to know.

“I don’t think so.” For the first time, she looked away when she answered him.

“I need to know the truth.”

Glancing back at him, she said, “That is the truth. I think he thinks I’m as good as dead, if not gone already. I slurred my words. Started walking crooked. Talking crazy. Told him he had two faces.”

Symptoms of a brain bleed. “You need to get to a hospital.”

“I lied and faked it all. I just wanted him to quit hitting me.”

He had a feeling it hadn’t been nearly as easy to fool the bastard as she made it sound.

“Won’t he get suspicious when he finds you gone?”

“He drove me up here, hauled me out into the woods and left me there. That was sometime yesterday. I think.”

Holy hell! What kind of a beast did that to his own wife?

Studying her face, seeing small lines in her stretched skin, indicating previously healed lacerations, he knew he’d already answered his own silent question. Only a beast would do something like that.

He’d left her to die. And...

Their gazes met. For the first time, he saw stark fear in hers. It was almost as though he’d heard her words before she said them aloud. “He can’t know I’m still alive. If you alert anyone, he might find out...”

Simon wasn’t in the market for company. At all. Of any kind.

But he wasn’t turning her away.

He might be half-blind. A failure. He was not cruel.

“If you stay here, I won’t alert anyone. If you go, I will.”

“How long do plan to keep me prisoner?” The unflappable voice was back.

Maybe he should have seen the question coming. Figured a woman who was used to beatings might think that way. He was used to trying to put himself in young minds when it came to his patients.

“As a doctor, I can’t just let you walk out of here in this condition. You die and it’s on me. Believe me, I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now. I want you to stay here for as long as it takes to get you healthy. I need to start you on antibiotics, too,” he told her, hurrying there at the end.

He’d said too much. I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now.

Clearly, he was out of practice when it came to acting like a rational member of society, or even holding a normal conversation.

Hence his extended trip to the woods. And...maybe...a little bit because of it.

She was studying him. He waited for some takedown regarding his guilt comment. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “Fair enough, Dr. Walsh. I don’t leave, you don’t call. Just until I’m recovered enough to disappear on my own.”

Simon nodded, not sure if he’d come out from the conversation—the day—unscathed. He’d load his gun—just in case her story didn’t hold up. Or whoever had beaten her came looking.

He’d tend to his patient, and then he’d send her on her way. Without alerting anyone to her presence.

From there, she was on her own.

And so would he be.

Just as he’d planned.

CHAPTER THREE

CARA SWALLOWED THE water held to her lips. Whenever the doctor was in the room, she mustered up the wherewithal to speak as though nothing was wrong. Years of practice protecting Shawn—but mostly she had been protecting...

No, she couldn’t go there—had honed her ability to continue on through the pain. As though it didn’t exist.

Sometimes she wondered if pain was just a figment of the imagination. Thought a lot about the power of mind over matter.

She could deal with living in a body that hurt with every move she made.

It was the emotional stuff that she wasn’t so sure about. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to try anymore.

What was the point?

Except that...she wasn’t dead. Shawn had left her for dead. As she’d traipsed through the Nevada wilderness, hungry, hurting, nearly freezing to death at night until she’d found a ditch to huddle in, finding not even a path on which to walk, she’d accepted that she was going to die.

Had come to peace with doing so.

So why wasn’t she dead? Why was she lying on a nice mattress under a soft comforter, wearing a makeshift hospital gown?

The doctor had cut the sleeves off a man’s shirt and instructed her to put it on backward, buttoned only halfway up. He’d said nothing about her undies, and though she’d have liked a change, she’d left them on.

She’d shuddered a time or two as he ran his practiced hands over her body, feeling for breaks, discussing his findings. Her ankle was a little swollen—her doing. As was the bruise on her knee and the bit of swelling on her right wrist. The cuts on her arms and face—all of which he’d carefully cleaned, covered with some kind of ointment and then bandaged where applicable—were compliments of Shawn. The arm abrasions had come when she’d held them up to protect her face.

He’d tended to the bruises and cuts on her legs, too. Left there by the steel-toed tips of the boots her husband wore when he wasn’t surfing. Since moving to the West Coast he’d begun to fancy himself as some kind of cowboy surfer dude.

In the beginning, she’d thought he looked damned cute in his tight jeans and Western shirts unbuttoned to the navel. But somewhere along the way, everything about Shawn had ceased being a turn-on.

According to him he was the one who’d brought joy back to her life, which had been something she hadn’t felt since before her mother got sick and life had become a series of doctors. With her father’s contacts, there’d been a never-ending stream of them. Over and over he’d put her mother through examinations and treatments. All he’d really done was deliver them boatloads of dashed hopes. And...

No, she knew better than to open a door that she’d spent years nailing shut.

Funny, here she was, ready to go herself, and she’d been rescued by a doctor, of all people.

What did that mean?

“Get some rest...” Dr. Walsh had finished tending to her and was pulling the sheet and comforter up to her chin. She’d practically choked getting down the antibiotic and painkiller he’d given her.

A huge believer in accountability and in Karma, Cara decided against thinking for the next few hours. Just long enough to sleep.

Sleep brought clarity, which she needed to figure out what her still being alive meant.

It had been so long since she’d really slept. Without senses on alert. Without fear.

She had nothing else to fear now.

And she really just wanted to sleep.

For as long as he’d let her.

* * *

HE WOKE HER in the late afternoon. Checked her vitals. Shone the light in her eyes again. Gave her more to drink. Cara complied with words of thanks. Hoping to slip back into the forgetfulness of sleep.

“You need to eat.”

Her burning throat was barely handling the liquid, not that she wanted him to know that. “I’m not hungry.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to have an appetite,” the doctor’s kind voice came back at her. “But you’ve gone over twenty-four hours, at least, without sustenance, and I have no way of starting an IV here. So...you eat...or I make a call.”

“You call, I die.” Without forethought she played on the guilt he’d exposed earlier. Men sometimes gave you tells.

Still, her words were thick. She was groggy. She couldn’t believe she still had fight in her. Probably just habit. It would dissipate.

Dr. Simon Walsh was trying to save her life.

She had no life to live. No intention of walking back into the world again. Ever.

Odd that, having made that determination, Karma had seen fit to deliver her up to a doctor. There was that fact staring her in the face again. Even after sleep. Did fate have a shadow side?

Or a twisted sense of humor?

Of course, she didn’t really believe that this doctor, if he was one, which, based on his care, she was pretty sure he was, was really on vacation. He’d said he’d been there a month already. Doctors—especially surgeons—didn’t take off that kind of time. And he obviously wasn’t planning on leaving in the next little bit, since he’d had no problem with keeping her there with him for as “long as it took.”

He couldn’t handle a death on his conscience. Pretty obvious he already had one there.

Ha! What if Karma had delivered her up to a doctor who was also a murderer? That one fit better. More like Fate and Karma were working together.

Which was always how she’d thought life worked. Until she’d learned that it didn’t. That no matter how good you were, how kind, how many good deeds you did or how hard you tried, love didn’t win in the end.

“I’ve got canned soup—pretty much any kind you’d want. I’d suggest starting with chicken noodle.”

She didn’t want any soup. Nourishment would only prolong things. But she didn’t want to be delivered back to Shawn, either. She’d much rather Walsh killed her. Inject her with something and be done with it.

Now, that would be good Karma. So maybe her good deeds wouldn’t go unpunished...

Lord knew, a needle and drifting off to sleep would be better than being locked up in a jail cell. Which was what she deserved.

If she could only wrap her mind around that truth.

“’Kay.” She’d eat his soup.

So he could get on with things. Even if, for now, it was just to go away and let her get back to sleep.

* * *

IT WAS DARK outside when he woke her again. Ironically, this time Cara felt hungry. Probably because of the whole bowl of soup he’d spooned into her mouth before. She’d had to keep her eyes closed while she swallowed, lest he see the tears that the resulting pain brought to her eyes. She couldn’t risk him figuring he’d have to call someone to do something about it.

It would go away in a few days. It always did. Her throat muscles just needed enough time to heal from Shawn’s strangling grasp. He never went far enough to do actual damage. Only enough to instill fear. And pain.

Which was why, once she’d known there was no reason to stay with him any longer, she’d had the idea to fake alarming symptoms. He’d been so careful to make certain she never really needed medical attention. Which told her he was afraid of her needing medical attention. She knew him well. Had pegged it right.

Up until the part where she’d been found out in the middle of nowhere by a surgeon on extended vacation with someone’s soul on his conscience...

He put water to her lips. She drank, her throat muscles throbbing with pain at every swallow. Took another pain pill. The antibiotic, he’d said, was only twice a day.

“You need to use the restroom?”

She shook her head. Not badly enough to get up. Or have him carry her there then wait around while she did her business.

Though why she should care made no sense, either.

Still, she’d go when she could get there by herself. She’d once held it for thirty-six hours when Shawn had been on a particularly brutal bender and she’d had Joy safely hidden in the dog house that Shawn had later torn down. Joy, poor little thing, had had to wear torn pieces of Cara’s clothes as diapers until her father had sobered up.

Then he’d bought them both new wardrobes. And reminded her, with tenderness, that as a respected business owner, he would be believed when he told people the fight had been her fault. If she said anything. Reminded her, too, the hell he’d rescued her from. How he’d supported her. How he still provided for her and Joy—everything either of them could ever want. He’d been wonderful for over a year after that time...

“Can I get you anything else?”

The doctor had taken her vitals. Shone the light in her eyes again. Must have been satisfied. She supposed that was fine. If he knew she was on her deathbed, he’d make his damned call.

“No, thank you.” Her parents had been sticklers for manners. She had to be polite. Even at the end.

Denying her hunger felt right.

It was dark out and the doctor was wearing sweats. Another flannel shirt. She wondered if it was the middle of the night. Wondered where he was sleeping.

Wondered if he’d set some kind of timer to check on her. Figured by the spike in his short hair and the stubble on his chin that he must have.

What a nice thing to have done.

Santa Raquel, California

THE PHONE WAS RINGING. Lila McDaniels, managing director of The Lemonade Stand, a unique women’s shelter on the coast of California, sat straight up in bed. Being awoken in the middle of the night wasn’t an oddity in her line of work. It also didn’t often happen to her at home, in her condo. Her sacred space.

It was her cell phone. Only a few people had the number. Heart pounding, she grabbed it before she could get her glasses on to see who was calling.

“Hello.” Her tone was all business. It was all she knew how to be.

“Lila? I need your help.”

Edward. Her heart gave a little leap of a different kind—yet just as unsettling—when she recognized his voice. She’d known him over a month. Had spent a lot of time helping him with his granddaughter. It was not outlandish that she’d know his voice.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, already out of bed and pulling on a pair of brown pants. With her career—tending to the needs of abused and at-risk women and children—she was always ready to go.

“Joy’s crying and I can’t get her stop. She keeps asking for her mother. Wants to know where Julie is. Asking me if Hunter’s home. Obviously she wasn’t ready to stay with me. I’ve tried rocking her. Talking to her. Gave her some warm milk. Turned on the TV. Nothing’s working. Can I bring her back? Please?”

She’d worried that it might be too soon for Edward’s new-to-him seven-year-old granddaughter to spend the night in his hotel suite—a night away from The Lemonade Stand where she’d been living since she’d seen her father beat up her aunt and then cart her mother away.

But he’d been granted temporary custody and would be given full custody in the event that his daughter’s body was found. Sara, Joy’s counselor, had felt that the sooner the little girl found security within her new family unit, the better. Especially since her father’s arrest.

Shawn Amos had been the last one seen with his wife. Beating her. Hauling her away from their house by her hair. The same day he’d beaten his sister to death. The man was in jail on charges of first-degree murder. His wife, Joy’s mother, Cara, was missing—and the man claimed to have no idea where she was. Police were actively searching for her, but many assumed the worst. That they were seeking a dead body, not a live one.

Especially after days had passed since Shawn Amos’s arrest and Cara hadn’t turned up. If she were able, she’d certainly have sought help. By all accounts, she’d lived for Joy. Nothing would stop her from getting back to her daughter. If she was able.

“I can hear the tension in your voice,” Lila said, having pulled the phone away only long enough to slide the beige turtleneck over her head and step into low-heeled brown shoes as she grabbed her jacket.

“I don’t know what to do,” Edward, a general practitioner from Florida, said. “I love this child more than I thought possible. I’m blowing it already...”

“If I can hear the tension in your voice, so can she,” Lila said, keys in hand. “Ask her if she wants to come back to The Lemonade Stand. Talk to her like she’s one of your young patients. I’ll hold.”

She could hear Edward call Joy’s name. Hear his impersonal yet kind tone as he did as Lila requested.

Lila heard no response. But no crying, either.

“She nodded.” Edward came back on the line.

“Don’t bother changing her out of her pajamas,” Lila said. “Wrap her in a blanket and carry her down to the lobby. Call for your car first. Talk to her. Doesn’t matter what about. Your voice will be reassurance. Your body warmth gives her a sense of security. Make sure she’s buckled up. Drive carefully and I’ll see you there.”